Sympathy for the Devil
by Floofeymarshmallow
Summary: Dean walked into the bathroom and did not see what he expected to see. Sam, his baby brother, Sammy, was laying on the ground, unconscious with blood pouring from his wrist at an alarming rate. Contains Self harm and suicidal ideation.
1. Chapter 1

It had been a normal night. Dean and Sam shared a couple beers, had a brotherly talk, before calling it a night and hitting the sack. Well, Dean thought that's what his brother did.

Sometime during the night, Dean had to get up and take a leak. Beer did that to you, and Dean Winchester was no exception to the powers of bladder and liquid. He walked through the motel room, not even registering that Sam wasn't in his bed on the other side of the room like he should have been. The only thing that ran through Dean's still slightly buzzed mind was that he needed the toilet.

Dean walked into the bathroom and did not see what he expected to see.

Sam, his baby brother, Sammy, was laying on the ground, unconscious with blood pouring from his wrist at an alarming rate.

Dean quickly crouched to his brother and grabbed some towels, putting pressure on his wrist. This wasn't anything they hadn't been through before. When they were fighting those ghouls back when Adam…well, they had slit Sam's arms up and Dean cleaned them up. They were stitched for a while.

Dean's first reaction was to wake Sam up, ask him what he was fighting when this happened, but after taking note of the razor beside his little brother, he knew the only person Sam was fighting was himself.

"It's okay, little brother," Dean said softly, trying to be of some comfort. He knew he wouldn't do much good with Sam being unconscious and all.

He lifted what he could of Sam off the ground and dragged him over to the bed. He wasn't leaving Sam in the most comfortable of positions, but it had to be better than lying on the cold hard floor of the bathroom.

"911, what's your emergency?" the operator asked when Dean had finally gotten a hold of them. He was so scared that he didn't think about his next move.

"Um…" Dean trailed. He didn't know if he even wanted these people. His brother was obviously hurt, and had obviously done this to himself. Did he need a doctor? Not necessarily, Dean could patch this up himself, but he wasn't sure if he was too shell-shocked or not to work on him. "Never mind," the eldest Winchester said before hanging up on the operator.

"We don't need them, do we, Sammy?" Dean asked to no one, grabbing some of his supplies and getting out everything he needed to doctor up the wound. He was quick at beginning to work, but didn't bother to give Sam any anesthetic. It wasn't like they had any morphine or anything, and while they had pills Sam could take, he wasn't conscious enough to swallow.

It was fairly quick; Dean managed to get the wound stitched up in an hour and a half. He was careful, not wanting to fuck up his brother's body even more than the kid had done to himself.

He knew things were getting bad in Sam's head. Hell, the wall was down and Lucifer was running free in his head, but he didn't think it was this bad. He didn't think it was so bad that the kid would contemplate something as serious as suicide.

 _This wasn't suicide,_ Dean thought to himself. _The kid was just trying to get the devil to stop dancing in his head for a few minutes._ Dean didn't know who he was trying to convince, but he needed to have a talk when Sam woke up.

When Sam awoke, Dean was sitting beside his bed on a chair. There was pain shooting through him into his arm and when Sam looked over, he noticed that his wrist was stitched up and bandaged. Dean must have caught him in the act.

If Sam was being honest, he didn't even remember what happened. He had slit his wrist in his attempt to get Lucifer to shut the hell up and when he woke up, he was here. He had vague memories of trying to stop the bleeding, of dropping the razor when his vision went blurry, and of falling onto the floor. His head still hurt from the fall.

"Sammy…" Dean trailed off, and Sam knew that voice. That was Dean's, 'we need to talk', voice. It was a voice identical to their father's whenever he wanted to talk to the boys about something.

"I'm sorry," Sam apologized. He didn't know what he was apologizing for – he just felt like it needed to be said. He gazed down at his wrist, refusing to look at Dean in the eyes. He was probably being a burden on Dean. Dean shouldn't have to do this – stitching him up. He could have left him to die. He _should_ have left him to die. These were Sam's thoughts, anyway.

"What are you sorry for?" Dean asked. "I'm the one who should be sorry. I didn't think Lucifer was that bad, ya know?"

"I know, Dean," Sam said with a sigh. "I just wanted him to shut up. Like you showed me how to do with my hand."

"What are you saying?" Dean asked.

"When my hand stopped working, I had to step up the game," Sam explained.

"Are you telling me that you've been doing this for a while?" Dean placed a hand on Sam's shoulder, his green eyes wide as they stared into Sam's hazel ones. "Sam, tell me you haven't been doing this before this night."

"Dean, I've been cutting myself for the past month," Sam said. "I've been doing it on my legs so you wouldn't see."

"Your legs?" Dean asked.

"Sometimes I do it on my shoulders. You don't see a lot of me shirtless or without pants, but you do see my wrists," Sam said. "I went a little too deep trying out a new area."

"Sammy…" Dean trailed off. He didn't know what to say. He knew Sam was off his rocker. Normal people just didn't cut themselves or see the devil. He wondered if he should contact a therapist or something, but they didn't ever stay in the same place for very long with their lifestyle anyway.

"Don't get all sappy on me," Sam said. "I don't need any help or anything. I've got my coffee and I know how to deal with Lucifer now."

"Obviously you don't know how to deal with Lucifer if he's running through your head and making you do stupid shit like cutting yourself, Sam!" Dean shouted. "You tried to commit suicide on me!"

"I wasn't trying!" Sam exclaimed.

"You're going to a doctor," Dean said immediately. "You're going and you're going to tell them everything you won't tell me."

"I just told you!" Sam shouted once again. "I just told you what was happening and now you're sending me to a doctor because I won't talk to you?!"

"You should have come to me when your hand thing stopped working!" Dean shouted back. "I would have helped you; you know I am _always_ here for you, Sammy!"

"Apparently not if you're going to send me to a doctor," Sam said with a sigh. He turned over on the bed and gripped at the bandage on his wrist. Dean grabbed his hand.

"Don't do that," the older brother said gently – seeming calmer now than he had been before. "Look, I'm just going to call a doctor to see if they can help with something like this."

"Help with something like me seeing the devil?" Sam asked. "You know as well as I do that they don't know anything about the supernatural."

"Yeah, but they help people with this kind of stuff all the time," Dean said. "It might actually help you, and if it doesn't and it makes you all loopy, I'll be here and take you right off that nasty shit."

"…Thanks, Dean."


	2. Chapter 2

Sam had done it this time. Dean had called the doctor the morning after he found his brother cut up on the floor and practically bleeding out. He didn't want this to be a repeated behavior, and thought it wouldn't be if he had done something quick enough.

Apparently he hadn't been quick enough.

"I want your brother to be placed in residential care," the therapist - Dr. Bates, Dean remembered - said. "I know of plenty nice facilities that I work with that would allow him to get the care he needs."

"Why the hell do you want him to be in residential care?" Dean asked. He wasn't an idiot, and knew that by 'residential care' that meant that Sam would be placed in a looney bin. Hell, he had even been there himself in the past. "I thought you were treating him just find."

"Your brother seems to be showing signs of suicidal thoughts, and I believe the best option would be for him to be in residential care," Dr. Bates said simply. "Trust me, he'll be watched round the clock and you won't have to take time out of your day to hide anything he could use to hurt himself, or take time off of work just to watch him."

Ever since Dean had found out about Sam's issues, he had gotten them an apartment to stay in until the kid was treated. He figured that Sam would need time off of hunting until he could get better, and if Sam wasn't hunting, Dean wasn't either. During that time, Dean had managed to get a job at a mechanic's garage. The only thing he knew besides hunting was cars.

"I don't care if I have to hide the fucking knives or if Sam has to come with me to work," Dean said. "I'm willing to do anything I can to make sure that kid is safe, and I don't think putting him in a hospital and taking him away from me is gonna keep him safe."

"Sam told me about your father," Dr. Bates said. "He told me about the dependency you showed on him, and how you always found the need to please him. I'm sure it must be hard for you now that he's gone."

"What the fuck?" Dean asked. "You're not my therapist, you're Sam's therapist."

"I think you don't want your brother to go off to treatment because you're afraid of losing him," Dr. Bates said. "I don't think you worry for your brother's safety in there at all. I think you worry for your safety being apart from him."

"I don't worry about my own fucking safety," Dean said. "I do the opposite of that! I worry about _everyone's_ safety _except_ my own! Fuck you for even suggesting that!"

"I just think that you need to let go and allow your brother to receive the treatment he needs."

"Oh, he'll be receiving the treatment he needs all right. Treatment from another fucking doctor that isn't going to pry into _my_ life instead of _helping my brother_ like he should be!" Dean shouted. He walked out of the office, slamming the door behind him.

"Dean?" Sam asked quietly from the chair he was waiting in outside of the room. "Is everything okay?"

"Sammy." Dean sat in the chair beside his younger brother. "Do you want to go to a hospital?" he asked.

"What?"

"Do you want to go to a hospital?" Dean asked again. "You know, for residential therapy."

"No," Sam answered.

"Then you're not going to a hospital," Dean said. "And you're not coming back to this therapist either. We're getting you a real one."

"Okay, Dean."

* * *

 **You can find this fic, as well as a few others that I refuse to post on FFN due to sensitive material, on Archive of Our Own with my username, floofeymarshmallow.**


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